CSUSM professor in world's spotlight for ocean research

SAN MARCOS -- A Cal State San Marcos professor has published
startling research showing that the ocean has been soaking up about
half the carbon dioxide generated by humans since the dawn of the
Industrial Revolution.

The North County university's Victoria J. Fabry and the
international team of scientists she worked with found that carbon
dioxide, or CO2, is changing the chemistry of the sea and may well
be threatening ocean life.

The work has unraveled a scientific mystery over why so much
more carbon dioxide has been generated than can be measured in the
atmosphere. One researcher said the oceans can be said to have cut
the effect of carbon dioxide warming in half.

The National Science Foundation said the work represented the
first comprehensive study of the ocean's storage of carbon dioxide
derived from human activity.

The culprit

Carbon dioxide, a colorless and odorless gas, is a product of
respiration and combustion. Cement manufacturing and the burning of
coal and other fossil fuels are among the chief ways human activity
has added to the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere and in the
sea.

As the carbon dioxide levels rise in the ocean, the seawater
becomes more acidic. As the acid level increases, it may be more
difficult for a score of ocean creatures -- including reef-building
corals and a mollusk or snail known as the pteropod, which is a
particular interest of Fabry's -- to calcify and form their
protective shells.

And the calcium carbonate that those shells are made of, Fabry
said, is the very substance that neutralizes the carbon dioxide as
it dissolves in the seawater.

Fabry's study appears to confirm previous scientific models that
found carbon dioxide to be concentrated in the upper 10 percent,
perhaps the top 500 to 600 meters, of the oceans. The organisms the
professor and her colleagues studied require light, and so are also
plentiful in that upper strata of the sea.

Coral reefs at risk

The good news, Fabry said, is that without the ocean absorbing
almost half the carbon dioxide that humans have poured into the
atmosphere, the greenhouse effect and global warming could be far
more severe.

"It's a wake-up call," she said. "There are so many unknowns,
but we think there is cause for concern and people should
know."

Fabry said marine life is not likely to become extinct because
of increasing carbon dioxide levels, but she said that life will
shift from the colder waters of the north toward the equator. The
shift may change the ecology of the ocean in unpredictable
ways.

"If you like coral reefs, go see them now," said Fabry, a
Carlsbad resident who joined the university faculty in 1993 and who
in 2001 received the CSUSM president's award for innovation in
teaching. "They're going to calcify less in the future and when a
storm comes along, they're going to be weaker and break apart more
readily. … Coral reefs are in trouble worldwide."